I am no longer religious for many reasons. One of those reasons is that religion failed me personally. Christianity left me out in the cold to starve to death while it was busy setting the table for Christmas. It did not have the time or the patience for me when I was dying of epilepsy because it was busy blowing up Muslims in countries it could not pronounce. It did not have food to give to me while I was starving because it was too busy congratulating Kayne West on his latest album. It did not have shelter for me when I was sleeping in a car because it was too busy teaching some baby in Nigeria to despise homosexuals. In short, religion was completely indifferent to my existence, and so I am now indifferent to its existence. As the bible says, you reap what you sow. You get out what you put in. And if the religious world has decided that it will put nothing into the communities it pretends to represent, if it chooses to sow hate instead of love, then that is what it shall receive in return. It is that simple; you cannot get anymore biblical than that, not that I care about being biblical. I just find it ironic when it works out that way. But the main reason I left religion was not the hate, but the preaching. The constant, endless, never ceasing cacophony of demands, special pleading and instructions were what really drove me from the church. Churches are great at telling you how to feel bad about your actions, but I had already been hating myself for a long time. I already felt guilty when I went to church; that is why I ended up there in the first place. All the church did was heap even more guilt on top of the guilt I was already bearing on my exhausted shoulders. Once at church I learned that I was not feeling bad the right way, that I had to feel even worse than I already felt before I ever came there. So, there was really no point to be there either. If it is all about feeling like an awful person instead of trying to feel better, then, really, religion has no point, not to me anyway. So I returned to my secular life and I enjoy my secular life. But it is my secular life, no one else's. I do not need other secular people, whether they be relatives, celebrities or social media influencers to instruct me on how to live my secular life. I am not interested in that. That is why I rarely bother going on social media these days, unless it is just a quick hello to the fans of the show. Social media, much like church, simply has nothing to offer me...other than guilt that is. Influencers are just preachers without the funny costumes. They have followers, merchandise, books, dictates, group forums, and self-righteous sermons. Sounds like a church to me. I have no love for secular preachers just as I have no love for religious preachers because there is no difference between the two. They both want to control you; they both want you to behave, to follow the rules, to adore them and to put no gospel before their own. I have no time for this. I have far better things to do than to listen to someone scream at me for eating a steak on Christmas or for getting married to my high school sweetheart or for not having the appropriate amount of empathy or for not agreeing with a news anchor. Again, this is just church by another name; and a church by any other name puts me to sleep. Group think is boring; it does not matter who does it. It does not matter how cool you think your brand of mob behavior is, it is still mob behavior nonetheless. I am my own man. I do not need to yell that at some out group from a stage like Dave Chapelle or Jerry Seinfeld. I do not need to paid for my individuality. I will always give that to you for free. You do not need to pay me to be myself. Perhaps I agree with you most of the time, but that does not mean I completely agree. I find the very idea of groups stifling because all groups seek to create guilt in their members. Now keep your sermon to yourself and kindly show me the exit.